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Andrew Solomon and John Habich

NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND, JUNE 30 Top, Andrew Solomon, left, and John Habich at Althorp, the Spencer estate.Credit
Jonathan Player for The New York Times

IT was no billet-doux. Certainly, there was nothing in the e-mail message Andrew Solomon sent John Habich six years ago, as they were arranging their first meeting, to suggest that they would one day publicly wed at an English country house.

“I understand you might write something about my book,” Mr. Solomon — the author of “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression” (Scribner 2001), examining depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms — recalled writing to Mr. Habich, then on the staff of The Minneapolis StarTribune. “Do let me know if you have any questions of a nature such that the author might be of assistance.”

But not long into their interview in St. Paul, where Mr. Solomon was on a book promotion tour, Mr. Habich realized that he had been “thwacked by cupid,” he said. Mr. Solomon, of New York and London, was smitten, too.

Pretty soon Mr. Solomon and Mr. Habich were arranging long-distance dates, during which each developed an appreciation for the different circles in which the other moved.

Mr. Solomon, for instance, asked Mr. Habich to be his guest at a White House dinner. Mr. Habich, 54, said: “I thought, this early in our relationship, we should keep everything on an even footing, so I invited him to an occasion of state, too: the Minnesota State Fair.”

The fair gave Mr. Solomon, who has written about his travels to places like China, a chance to learn about Midwestern exotica like butter sculptures and dairy princesses. Travel, and a sense of reciprocity, proved to be recurring themes in their relationship.

“John became, in some ways, the cure for my depression,” said Mr. Solomon, 43, adding that Mr. Habich, who is 11 years older, seemed like a “fully formed person.”

“John is funny and has a quick wit but not at others’ expense,” he added.

Mr. Habich said he was touched that Mr. Solomon, despite being a celebrated author with a busy social schedule, cared deeply about his family, regularly having tea with a great-aunt in Manhattan, for example.

In the fall of 2001, Mr. Solomon, who has a house in Lower Manhattan, headed to Minneapolis for six weeks.

By December 2003, Mr. Habich had moved to New York and had become the deputy editor for entertainment at Newsday on Long Island. Soon after, he decided he wanted a more serious commitment. On a trip to Ghana for a friend’s wedding, he proposed to Mr. Solomon.

Mr. Solomon initially was lukewarm about the idea. The commitment ceremonies between gay couples that he had witnessed “had been kind of kitschy,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it if it wasn’t going to mean anything,” he added.

But Mr. Solomon looked into the matter and discovered that, because he had American and British citizenship, he and Mr. Habich were eligible to join in a civil partnership under legislation that took effect in Britain in 2005, giving gay couples the same rights as men and women who marry. So, as they were walking home from dinner on Fifth Avenue one evening, Mr. Solomon proposed. This time, planning began in earnest.

Beneath portraits of Princess Diana and her Spencer ancestors on the staircase of Althorp’s central hall, Pam Allen, superintendent registrar for Northampton, officiated. This civil procedure was followed by Christian and Jewish ceremonies.

They listened as the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, a minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard, urged the couple to remain “outré.”

Calling their union, “an act of the imagination,” Mr. Gomes continued: “Let your imaginations run wild. Think the unthinkable — because, 30 years ago, that is what this would have been.”

The nearly 300 guests included family members and friends — among them, Howard Solomon, Andrew’s father, who is the chief executive of Forest Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company in New York, and Uma Thurman.

After dinner, Mr. Habich and Mr. Solomon were summoned by Dame Julia Neuberger, a rabbi, for a service that Liberal Judaism, the British organization she represents, has developed for civil partnerships.

Mr. Solomon’s father then spoke of Andrew and his partner, “who fell in love and had to struggle against their community.”

The couple said the juxtaposition of religious and secular ceremonies, of New York urban style and British country living, was purely intentional. “On the one hand, one wants to avoid aping the straight traditions,” the younger Mr. Solomon said. “But on the other, one wants to acknowledge that while the details are different, the feelings are the same.”

Calling himself “gay marriage’s biggest fan,” Mr. Solomon added, “The love that dared not speak its name is now broadcasting.”